Mortar Turrets Prt III

ADVANCED MORTAR SYSTEM

AMOS

AMOS is a twin-barrelled, breech-loaded, mortar turret suitable for integration to medium-sized (10–25 ton) wheeled or tracked armoured vehicles. 

The two-man turret has armament comprising two independent 120-mm smoothbore mortars mounted into a common cradle with an equilibrator and a loading device. 

The turret is designed to meet the highest requirements of combat capability and to give the crew a high survivability level in all battlefield conditions. AMOS is characterised by its extremely high rate of fire that gives high impact on target—the maximum rate of fire is up to 26 rounds/min and the number of rounds in MRSI (multiple rounds simultaneous impact) is as high as 14. 

The lethality is therefore higher than with any other mortar system. The twin barrel concept reduces the overall number of systems, has lower barrel temperature and thus lower barrel wear.

The mobility of the APC chassis supports vehicle survivability on the modern battlefield and the system can rapidly deploy whenever fire support is needed. It also moves quickly to another firing position to avoid enemy counterfire, justifying the expression “gun and run”.

The mortars fire conventional 120-mm, smoothbore, finstabilised ammunition. Special ammunition, such as cargo and guided ammunition, can be used directly as these were originally developed for smoothbore barrels.

AMOS has following main benefits:

high rate of fire;
• direct-fire capability;
• rapid deployment (gun and run);
• ballistic and NBC protection;
• low chassis loads due to recoil system;
• large amount of ammunition on board;
• suitability for all standard 120-mm smoothbore mortar
ammunition; and
• full 360º traverse.

Reference:
Reunomaki, Kari M., "AMOS Advanced Mortar System", Journal of Battlefield Technology, Vol. 5, No. 1, March 2002.